Hi folks,

yes, I know, google is my friend, but before I dig through tons of web 
pages about tons of different tools, I thought I'd ask you folks here.

I need an animation tool with the following properties:

- Runs on Windows 7 x64.

- Takes a numbered series of images as input, just like the stuff 
POV-Ray spits out.

- Generates output that can be viewed in Windows Media Player without 
fuss (i.e. no need to install 3rd party codec packages). (The ability to 
create animated GIFs would be a nice-to-have, too.)

- Easy to use; ideally I'd just right-click on the first image of the 
animation series in the Windows explorer, select "open with... [this 
particular tool]", and it automatically identifies the other images to 
load. It should then either just dump the result into a file with 
similar name without even firing up a UI, or pop up a UI where it only 
takes me two, three clicks to have it generate the animation.

Anyone know a tool that matches these requirements?

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Le 27/06/2014 20:23, clipka nous fit lire :
> Hi folks,
> 
> yes, I know, google is my friend, but before I dig through tons of web
> pages about tons of different tools, I thought I'd ask you folks here.
> 
> I need an animation tool with the following properties:
> 
> - Runs on Windows 7 x64.
> 
> - Takes a numbered series of images as input, just like the stuff
> POV-Ray spits out.
> 
> - Generates output that can be viewed in Windows Media Player without
> fuss (i.e. no need to install 3rd party codec packages). (The ability to
> create animated GIFs would be a nice-to-have, too.)

Which version ? (12 is on 7, Vista & Server 2008 have 11, which is also
available for XP, but 10 is the one for Server 2003, and if the upgrade
was not done, 5.1 might be found on XP!)

Once you have restricted somehow the version, the list of available
default codec might be easier to reduce.

animated gif is not specific to Windows, and finding some software for
that should be easy (unless you need a freeware on windows). The issue
with gif is the limited palette of 256 colours (in theory per bloc, but
it is safer to assume a single global palette of 256 colours).

> 
> - Easy to use; ideally I'd just right-click on the first image of the
> animation series in the Windows explorer, select "open with... [this
> particular tool]", and it automatically identifies the other images to
> load. It should then either just dump the result into a file with
> similar name without even firing up a UI, or pop up a UI where it only
> takes me two, three clicks to have it generate the animation.
> 

There is something called command-line... a windows port of ImageMagick
would match your requirements... sort of. No UI at all, at least.

> Anyone know a tool that matches these requirements?

Have you looked at Gimp and it's animation package (GAP) ?
(povray--> batch convert to xcf format--> Gap--> Done!)



-- 
IQ of crossposters with FU: 100 / (number of groups)
IQ of crossposters without FU: 100 / (1 + number of groups)
IQ of multiposters: 100 / ( (number of groups) * (number of groups))

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clipka <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
> Anyone know a tool that matches these requirements?

I once spent a long time searching for something with similar requirements.
Eventually I gave up and invested some time making some ffmpeg recipes. I can
dig out a couple of examples I've used if you'd like?

Bill

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Am 30.06.2014 15:12, schrieb Bill Pragnell:
> clipka <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
>> Anyone know a tool that matches these requirements?
>
> I once spent a long time searching for something with similar requirements.
> Eventually I gave up and invested some time making some ffmpeg recipes. I can
> dig out a couple of examples I've used if you'd like?

I think I've settled for VirtualDub for now. Uncompressed AVIs are only 
a mouse click or two away, and creating compressed ones is far from 
black magic as well. It also does animated GIFs.

Post a reply to this message

Am 30.06.2014 15:12, schrieb Bill Pragnell:
> clipka <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
>> Anyone know a tool that matches these requirements?
>
> I once spent a long time searching for something with similar requirements.
> Eventually I gave up and invested some time making some ffmpeg recipes. I can
> dig out a couple of examples I've used if you'd like?

Wait - ffmpeg, isn't that some cross-platform library collection?

Might be handy to have some video export built into POV-Ray (or at least 
UberPOV), so if you do have some sample C++ code then yes, I'd like to 
have a look at it.

Post a reply to this message

clipka <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
> Am 30.06.2014 15:12, schrieb Bill Pragnell:
> > clipka <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
> >> Anyone know a tool that matches these requirements?
> >
> > I once spent a long time searching for something with similar requirements.
> > Eventually I gave up and invested some time making some ffmpeg recipes. I can
> > dig out a couple of examples I've used if you'd like?
>
> I think I've settled for VirtualDub for now. Uncompressed AVIs are only
> a mouse click or two away, and creating compressed ones is far from
> black magic as well. It also does animated GIFs.

Ah, sweet. That was the next best thing I found IIRC, except I think there was
an upper limit on frame count (no idea if that's still true)... and I was
ideally after something usable on *nix.

Post a reply to this message

clipka <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
> I think I've settled for VirtualDub for now. Uncompressed AVIs are only 
> a mouse click or two away

Depending on the size and framerate of the video, it may happen that
your system will be unable to play the video properly.

Perhaps a bit ironically, with large videos it's more efficient to
play compressed video than raw video (because with raw video the I/O
becomes a significant bottleneck, while decompressing even very demanding
compression formats like H.264 is relatively easy for the CPU to do).

Creating high-quality compressed video is an artform in itself.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Am 30.06.2014 21:17, schrieb Warp:

> Perhaps a bit ironically, with large videos it's more efficient to
> play compressed video than raw video (because with raw video the I/O
> becomes a significant bottleneck, while decompressing even very demanding
> compression formats like H.264 is relatively easy for the CPU to do).

Doesn't come as a surprise to me.

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I create a folder "Frames" in the same scene folder and use use this INI
template:
First need to create a batch file "Convert.bat" (see below). It clears the
Frames folder, renders frames, calls ImageMagick to create GIF and calls Chrome
to view the results (salt to taste):

Input_File_Name  = Scene.pov
Output_File_Name = Frames\frame-

Width  = 600
Height = 600

Initial_Frame = 0
Final_Frame   = 36
Initial_Clock = 0
Final_Clock   = 1

Cyclic_Animation = Off
Antialias        = On
Sampling_Method  = 2
Output_Alpha     = Off
Jitter           = On
Output_File_Type = N

Pre_Scene_Command  = C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /C Del /Q Frames\*.*
Post_Scene_Command = "Convert.bat"

;Convert.bat:
;
;SET Convert=C:\Programs\Utilities\Graphics\ImageMagick\convert.exe
;SET FramesIn=Frames\*.png
;SET GIFOut=Animation.gif
;%Convert% -delay 1x15 %FramesIn%  %GIFOut%
;"C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe
C:\Projects\Scene\Animation.gif"
;EXIT

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This animation INI works. Create a folder called "Frames" in the scene folder
and a batch file "Convert.bat" (see below). It clears the Frames folder, creates
the frames, calls ImageMagick to convert them to GIF, and opens Chrome to view
the results (salt to taste).

Input_File_Name  = Scene.pov
Output_File_Name = Frames\frame-

Width  = 600
Height = 600

Initial_Frame = 0
Final_Frame   = 36
Initial_Clock = 0
Final_Clock   = 1

Cyclic_Animation = Off
Antialias        = On
Sampling_Method  = 2
Output_Alpha     = Off
Jitter           = On
Output_File_Type = N

Pre_Scene_Command  = C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /C Del /Q Frames\*.*
Post_Scene_Command = "Convert.bat"

;Convert.bat:
;
;SET Convert=C:\Programs\Utilities\Graphics\ImageMagick\convert.exe
;SET FramesIn=Frames\*.png
;SET GIFOut=Animation.gif
;%Convert% -delay 1x15 %FramesIn%  %GIFOut%
;"C:\Program Files (x86)\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe
C:\Projects\Graphics\Color\Color Wheels\Sunflowers\A\2\Animation.gif"
;EXIT

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